The fact that you were able to edit that down to under 40 minutes and still maintain much of the context, was a massive achievement on its own. Well done and thanks for this.

When Willard, talking about home says "...I'd been there and it doesn't exist." This is some brilliant writing, he is describing the effect war has on the men sent to fight and how the horrors they experience changes them, that they can't relate to normal life despite it being all they desperately want. Home is now in the past, they are a very different person now - damaged by what they have seen, the innocence they once had has been stolen so going home can never feel the same. This is also a theme in Tolkiens work and the Lord of The Rings, he fought in WW1. Everything you fight for and even if you win, the cost of winning is so hard and takes so much - so finally when you get home, the thing you were fighting for no longer exists.

I watched this with my dad a couple years after it came out. He was a USMC Vietnam Veteran. Growing up I never knew he did anything other than administrative duties. But when they were at bridge scene and the Captain left the boat to find the commanding officer, and the black soldier with cammo paint on his face fired a weapon in the air, my dad pointed it out to me and said “that’s what I carried over there!” It was the M-79 grenade launcher. I said that I thought he carried a pencil over there. He had a laugh at that and told me that he went out on long patrols. I later found out that he was Marine Force Recon before I was born

the only movie I have seen in a theatre that, when it was over, the entire audience walked out in compete silence. Not a word uttered. Not even a whisper.

"Are they supposed to be doing this?" That's basically the question of the entire Vietnam war.

the young black 17years old kid on the boat, was (the 14 years old in reality) Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from the Matrix)

The making of Apocalypse Now was famously a nightmare for Francis Ford Coppola. Long delays from the rainy season, Harvey Keitel getting fired, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, Marlon Brando playing a super fit special forces officer and turning up on set massively overweight. The documentary Heart of Darkness shows the insanity really bled into the real life production of the movie

Listening to that tape playing of his mother when he was shot and killed on Mother's Day, hits a little harder. What an amazing masterpiece of a film. Still shocks. Still amazes.

Robert Duvall is the G.O.A.T.

Honestly, Cassie, the reason I continue to return to your channel is because you get so deeply involved with what you're watching. It's refreshing to see someone with so much humanity and sweetness react to all the good, bad, light, and dark things you see in these movies---it's a completely different experience from watching movies with my family or friends or on my own. And your reactions sometimes affect me, as well. There's plenty of ugliness in the world we live in and it's easy to become cynical about our increasing lack of humanity, to think that recovering our decency, compassion, and morality is a lost cause in modern society as we grow increasingly distant to each other. But you and Carly are a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who haven't fallen victim to the cold and ugly bitterness that has swallowed so many people these days. It's refreshing and hopeful. So thank you for getting so emotionally involved while watching these movies. Thank you for sharing your reactions and being sincere with them. Thank you for inviting Carly to share in some of the viewing experiences with you, because you two make a great team! It's a nice change, seeing your sincerity, especially in a vidscape of staged reactions; and it's also interesting, fun, and telling how you process information, what you pick up and miss, what bothers you and why, and how you try to discern what's coming next. You are a relatable person. After having watching "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket", I would have thought "Apocalypse Now" would be an easier watch for you, but it goes to show how you don't take for granted the horrors and waste of war, even if it is presented as a piece of entertainment; and your confusion, frustration, and the wretchedness you felt truly sum up the pointlessness of the Vietnam war and the macabre atrocities it produced. Thank you again for being you and for sharing your cinematic journeys with us! And thanks for bringing Carly on the road with you! Love you both!

Dennis Hopper (the photographer/journalist) has always been very good at playing odd and/or insane characters in my small opinion.

i'm 77 and did almost 2 tours before i was sent back to the world. i still carry the scar across my face and left eye that was my ticket home. i still carry the nightmares in my head.

I believe that Martin Sheen actually had a heart attack during the filming. Also, the local village was in the process of sacrificing the water buffalo, so Coppola asked if they could film it, and they agreed.

There's a documentary about the making of this film called "Hearts of Darkness". It was one of the most grueling and crazy shoots ever (IIRC, Sheen had a heart attack close to filming and Brando was massively overweight). It's amazing they made the film they did.

There is a documentary about the making of this movie. Coppola's wife says in an interview that it was like the story. "We went into the jungle and slowly went mad."

The classical music piece the helicopters played on the loud speakers as they attacked, was *"Ride Of The Valkyries"* (first performed in 1870) from german composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner. *as per a quick Google search~* "This was originally used by Wagner to illustrate the majesty of a heavenward ascent. However, it appears in the film as an ominous precursor of destruction, “death from above,” a battle cry that will only be heard by the unsuspecting Vietnamese villagers when it's already too late."

To quote Francis Ford Coppola at Cannes in 1979: "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."

"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't let them write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene." That's my favorite quote from the film. It shows you how ludicrous and hypocritical war is. Also, once you see the image of Martin Sheen's head emerging from a swamp, you'll notice thereafter how frequently that iconic shot is emulated in so many other films.

Robert Englund tells a story about auditioning for this movie (he wanted to play Lance, the surfer). Coppola's casting director told him they were no longer looking for someone for that role, but he might fit for the space fantasy George Lucas was casting across the hall. And that was how Freddy Krueger auditioned to play Luke Skywalker. He didn't get the part, but he did go home to his roommate, Mark Hamill, and suggest that he have his agent set up an audition.

The people that put on shows were absolute heroes. Leaving their comfortable careers back home to spend months going from base to base to entertain the troops. If they were with the USO tours, it was a high-end show with great support. But thousands of people were non-USO performers, putting on independent shows or booked by military clubs, often responsible for their own protection. Several of them died. Maybe the most famous was Martha Raye. At home she was labeled a warmonger for going to Vietnam so many times, often at her own expense. When not putting on shows she worked as a volunteer nurse. She was wounded twice during these tours but kept going back. In 1994 she became the only civilian to be buried at Fort Bragg, home of the US Army Special Forces.

After watching the movie you said you never wanted to watch it again. Willard says they were sending him on a mission and, when it was over, he'd never want another one. The horror.

To give you some idea of how insane the Vietnam war was: a close family friend was in the Army and because he was the tallest in his unit he was always told to take point (walk in front.) On a patrol he came around a group of trees and bushes and came face to face with the enemy. The only thing that saved his life was he fired first. However, when he shot the other person he hit a grenade and blew the other guy up and took a bunch of shrapnel. He also has a fear of flying because every helicopter he was ever on in the war was shot down. The last time he was riding on one it started to take fire and was shot down, the only thing that saved his life was he had enough of being shot down so as soon as it started taking fire he jumped out, every one else on board died. A last aside, they hated the Air Force because whenever they were called in they would drop the bombs on them instead of the enemy. He loved the Navy because their deck guns were far more accurate. Needless to say he has severe PTSD.

Your ability to empathize is your biggest asset. Never feel like you have to justify your sensitivity. It's a beautiful thing.

There are two reasons Brando was shot primarily in shadow: 1. It's ten times creepier, as you yourself experienced. 2. Marlon Brando did not even attempt to get into anything resembling military-level shape (reports that he was 300 lbs are probably exaggerated, but he clearly did not look like an Army Special Forces colonel).

I think it's funny how Cassie doesn't want to watch Nightmare on Elm Street, but she watches Seven, Zodiac, Apocalypse Now and in comparison, Nightmare on Elm Street is a straight up comedy lol

That movie where Martin Sheen got ridiculously hammered in the hotel room, but Francis Ford Coppola said, "Let's just go with it", and Dennis Hopper was so high during the entire shoot he said years later he had no memory about making this movie. I guess there's no smell quite like coke in the morning.

"I feel it was so hard o make that movie." My friend, you have no idea. There have been documentaries made about how hard that movie was to make. It is an epic tale. If you read the wikipedia page about this movie, you will not believe it.

I’m just glad that Cassie waited this long for this movie, because it obviously affected her deeply and had it been one of the earlier movies on the channel she may have never recovered. Before I even watched the reaction I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. I hope she knows how much the fans of this channel appreciate her enduring these tough watches.

So impressed that Cassie read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness before this. Kudos. And yes, this is not a war movie nor anything political. It is just an adaptation of the novel.

The girls dancing was a USO show to entertain the troops, Bob Hope made the USO shows famous during world war two

18:54 The man introducing the Playboy Bunnies here is the legendary Bill Graham, who was best known for being a rock & roll impresario and concert promoter, and who helped to establish bands like The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and The Holding Company (whose vocalist was Janis Joplin), Santana, and many others who were based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

I wish I could feel the intensity Cassie feels when she watches movies. It reminds me of how I felt when I watched them when I was very young.

I love the smell of popcorn in the morning. It smells like victory.

Kurtz is such a fascinating character to me. He is a man who truly understands war, and it completely ripped his soul apart.

Sheen was intentionally drunk in the hotel room scene and he urged the camera crew to keep rolling regardless of what he did or said. At the time, he was actually battling personal demons including alcoholism, and despite the camera crew's unease Sheen insisted on pushing forward to confront his own struggles.

this is the greatest horror film ever made. the constant sense of dread just wares you down and then it actually shows you real horror

Regarding the water buffalo that was chopped up: this was filmed in the Philippines on one of its small islands. There was a "tribe" there which had the ceremony with the water buffalo once a year, as part of a celebration/feast. Coppola had heard about it and thought he might fit it into the movie, so he sent a crew out to get it on film -- and then he found a place for it in the movie.

There is so much to unpack from this film. That copious amounts of drugs were being taken during filming; that Brando was so out of shape that Coppola had to completely change how he shot Kurtz' part, deliberately using dark shadows and minimal lighting; that even after the release Coppola wasn't happy, hence the extended director's cut that exists; that filming was scheduled originally for 6 weeks, but instead took 16 months; the opening scene was unscripted, Sheen was drunk for real, and did cut himself for real on the mirror.

D. Anderson, USMC, Hotel Company, 2dBn, 9th Marines, 3d MarDiv, 2/9/3, 68-69 Operation Dewey Canyon. In memory of 58,281 men including 8 women, all nurses, 16 clergy members and 160 Medal of Honor recipients who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice.

The pilot of their chopper during the Ride of the Valkyries sequence was R. Lee Ermey who played Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. Also "I didn't get out of the goddamn eighth grade for this kinda shit." just might be my favorite line of all time.

'I am aware of the charges against me but I am not concerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality and so I am beyond caring." Masterpiece of filmmaking in every detail !!

As you mentioned Cassie the movie is based loosely on Heart of Darkness. So, it is a critique of American expansionism rather than the original colonialism. So, don't assume what you're watching is the experience of soldiers in Vietnam. It is an allegory of so many themes of war and Vietnam: strangers in a strange land, hypocrisy, senseless killing, etc. It would be like reading the Iliad and assuming its about the Trojan War. Homer was writing about the folly of man and his desires. So too for Coppola.

And it's a personal film for me , cause I worked with two women who were Cambodian, they lived through what the killing fields portrayed , they were young girls when it happened, one had tattoos on her shoulder that told the story of her father, the other told me about the escape as a little girl and after getting over the barbed wire, having to pull and wipe pieces of her cousin and best friend off of herself , there were tears in her eyes. She didn't cry much , she laughed at thing one normally doesn't, I realized at one point her laughter was a defense mechanism against her personal pain 😢 war truly is hell and a hell that never should have been created by man .

Its impressive how this movie starts off already crazy and gets more and more insane the farther the Boats gets upriver to the point that Kurtz' compound just _feels_ like *Hell*.

Others have probably already noted this, but two Martin Sheen facts - he suffered a massive heart attack during filming and almost died, and in that scene at the beginning where he punches the mirror and his hand bleeds? That was no acting - he seriously cut his hand and was bleeding badly, but the cameras kept rolling and he went with it.

Watching a compassionate person like her almost tear her heart out watching this film is as gut wrenching as the film.

Apocalypse Now has a stellar cast, right down to small roles. Harrison Ford picked the character Lucas, to pay homage to George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola has a meta cameo as the director telling Martin Sheen to not look at the camera. Christopher Walken is the soldier that delivers mail to the boat at the bridge. And while two of the dancers at the USO show were actual Playboy centerfolds, Colleen Camp plays the playmate that’s dressed like an Indian. She was the maid in Clue.

So in this movie where the Vietnamese lady throws the grenade in the helicopter in her hat, that particular scene gave my grandfather flashbacks, he yelled out grenade and doe for cover beside his chair, and that’s the furthest he’s ever gotten into that movie he has since passed away, but it was still a scary moment

Since this film touched upon Cambodia, I would strongly recommend The Killing Fields (1984) starring a young Sam Waterston and the extraordinary Dr. Haing S. Ngor, an actual survivor of the Cambodian genocide depicted in the film. Another overlooked film related to the Vietnam War is Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" (2006) and Herzog's documentary of the same subject, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997). I always enjoy and appreciate your reactions, Cassie!

Anyone who has ever flown on a Huey will never forget the sound of those rotor blades at the beginning of this movie 🚁

My favorite fun(?) fact about this movie is that some of the narration is spoken by Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Estevez who has a very similar, almost identical voice to him. When he had problems reading the script, that's when he realized his drinking became a problem. He's a very prolific actor, he probably had more roles than Martin Sheen.

As Franz Kafka wrote once to a friend about books: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” This movie is the the axe for the frozen sea within us.

One of the most beautiful nightmares ever put to film. Mad genius filmmaking.

The depth of feeling you have when you react to these difficult movies is the reason we watch.

“Charlie Don’t surf!” The Clash like it and named one of the songs on the Sandinista (1980) record after this quote from the movie. “Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger momma, Charlie’s gonna be a napalm star” sings Joe Strummer. Great song, great record, this movie’s a masterpiece. One of the best anti-war movies ever.

MACV-SOG was one of a few secretive units that operated during Vietnam. The Phoenix Project was a counterintelligence program that operated via assassination. Other elite units that operated were Mike Force, Tiger Force was another. Many of these were early forerunners to what would eventually become Delta Force.

One of the helicopter pilots in Col. Kilgore's 1st Air Cavalry Division is played by real life former Marine Corps staff sergeant R. Lee Ermey, who would later go on to play Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.

Now you can watch "The Deer Hunter". It'll cheer you up!

There was VERY little acting in this movie. Almost everything you see in this film was real and it took a huge toll on the cast and crew. The emotions were real. The injuries were real (Martin Sheen really did cut his hand open when he punched the mirror). Sam Bottoms was high out of his mind throughout the shoot. Lawrence Fishburne was only 14 when he started filming. Coppola very nearly committed suicide halfway through filming and was talked out of it by his wife. Sheen had a near-fatal heart attack. No one escaped this movie unscathed. I would highly recommend you watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness soon, as it goes into horrifying detail about how difficult Apocalypse Now was to make.

The “Roach” …Man he was so underrated… Dropping dimes with the m79 never gets old✌🏼

They called PTSD, shell shock. Even back then, they knew soldiers and victims of violent crime, often went through depression and extreme anxiety. I learned about it, watching M.A.S.H. on the television, when I was about seven or eight.

While this adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" novel is a fictional story set during the Vietnam War, it does recreate the madness of war masterfully. The horror... the horror.

The "montagnards" is what the French nicknamed the various small tribes that live in the mountains of mostly modern day Cambodia. They often ended up organizing into militias and working with US assistance to keep the North Vietnamese Army from using their land as supply routes on their way to South Vietnam where the war was.

20:48 Kurtz likely took over the large supply of ammunition given to the South Vietnamese units in his area. Remember, he had four high ranking ARVN generals killed. He likely took the supplies that was meant for them and gave them to his unit. And since his unit is a lot smaller, the ammunition will last longer. Either that, or he was using captured enemy weapons and supplies.

You are a brave woman. I've watched a lot of movies and I think Apocalypse Now is the darkest movie ever made. It's so raw and honest about the evil of war and through war the evil men are capable of. Just how far a person can fall and how deep horror can run. As a movie, it's incredible. It's a work of art and hard work and dedication by a group of extremely talented people from top to bottom. As a film it is an all time great, but it's hard to watch. Poor Kurtz. He wanted peace and thought the captain could give it to him, but in his last moments all he could think about was the horror. Apocalypse Now isn't a war movie. It's an anti-war movie.

you really are going out of your comfort zone with this. hope these folks appreciate how hard this is for you.

"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end. It hurts to set you free. But you'll never follow me. The end of laughter and soft lies. The end of nights we tried to die. This is the end..."

1. Surfing goofy-footed means that your left foot is in back, to control the board, rather than the right foot. 2. The use of the Doors song "The End" off their first album at the opening is the most perfect blend of movie and music I have ever seen. 3. I saw this as a first run movie at Osan AB in Korea in '79 or'80. A lot of the senior guys there were in Vietnam. After the movie, as we all left the theater, there was no chatter, no one spoke at all. Silence. And everybody walked down to the bowling alley, which was the last place open on base to buy beer. And started drinking. 4. At the end, you hear, "PBR street gang, calling Almighty." He was calling in Arc-Light. Arc-light was the name for the strategic bombing offensive over Vietnam. The first was code-named Rolling Thunder. B-52s each carrying 50,000 pounds of bombs. 5, At the Do Lung Bridge, Willard asks one soldier. "Who's in command?" The soldier pops off a round from his M-79 grenade launcher as answer. Clearly, he is. 6. There is a most excellent spoof of this called "Pork Lips Now" in which a man is ordered to go up to Chinatown to find a butcher who has gone renegade; selling pork lips for seven cents a pound. It is a must-watch, even better than "Bambi Meets Godzilla"

The Cambodians didn't want the North Vietnamese using their country as a supply line into South Vietnam (called the Ho-Chi-Minh Trail), which is why they were so willing to become soldiers for Col. Kurtz.

I'm English from Liverpool, whilst on vacation in Sicily I was speaking to a Vietnam veteran, he said he watched the movie many years ago and it brought it all back, so he won't watch it anymore, think that is really a tribute to the makers and actors, he also said the UK did well in refusing to take part.

The Montagnard's in Kurtz' "Army" were the mountain people who fought for the Americans against the VC and NVA. Green Berets trained, advised, and led them in combat. You've heard of them before as the Hmong people in Gran Torino.

This is the kind of movie that would make Cassie extremely receptive to reacting to one of the Peter Sellers Pink Panther movies.

I watched this movie with a good friend of mine who had actually been the rear gunner on a PBR boat in Vietnam. He gave a lot of in-depth insights about the experience, while we watched the movie. (He eventually got discharged because he took a bayonet to the gut while they were stopping and investigating a Vietnamese river boat that had enemy soldiers hiding inside it.)

Cassie, if Bob Duvall says it's safe to surf that beach, fhen it's safe to surf that beach!

Marlon Brando, the general killer, was very kind and wise in Superman The Movie. He was the Godfather and reprised the role in a spoof called "The Intern" I believe, with Mathew Broderick as the intern and he looked just the same as in the first movie 20 years earlier as he had been made to look older. Brando was in a Johnny Dep Movie called Don Juan DeMarko as a psychologist dealing with a spaniard swordsman and renowned lover Johnny Depp.

Did you know that Mr. Clean is Fishburn? He was 17, his first movie.

That's Robert Duvall "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning"😂😂😂

One of the greatest movies of all time !!

This movie re-defined all war movies that followed: Platoon, Full Metal Jacket. Before, it was John Wayne in the Green Berets and comedies like MASH. This movie changed it all

The first bar to open for Tourism in 1993 in Saigon was called The Apocalypse Now Bar with Posters from the film everywhere, lampshades over the pool tables were old US army helmets. The 2nd Bar was called The B475 Bar but Govt shut it down almost straight away, didn't like the name. The uncut version would of been better to watch, fills in a few holes.

👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍👍 One of the guys that you couldn’t think of his name was Robert Duvall. Here is the name of one of the great military movies the he has been in by the name “ The Great Santini” this gentleman is one of the greatest actors of our generation!!! If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it 👍

“I am beyond their timid lying morality”

Martin Sheen suffered a heart attack on this set and nearly died. He wasn't even nominated for an Academy Award.

“APOPalypse Now” LOL..... you kill it w/ the title graphics! 💯🔥🤙🏽😂

Martin Sheen's character, Captain Willard, was a member of the US Army Special Forces assigned to MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group. Established on January 24th, 1964, it conducted strategic reconnaissance missions in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia; took enemy prisoners, rescued downed pilots, conducted rescue operations to retrieve prisoners of war throughout Southeast Asia, and conducted clandestine agent team activities and psychological operations.

9:58 Just go through, go through. A moment earlier this "reporter" had told Martin Sheen and the rest of the troops gawking at the camera crew, Dont look at the cameras, pretend like youre fighting. This is actually the director, Coppola, in a cameo in his own movie🎉

My brother was a movie theater manager and his theater showed this when it came out (back when many theaters had only one screen). He told me some Vietnam vets would come to see it but as soon it started, with the helicopters flying by is slow motions with the altered propeller sounds, a few would go back to the box office and ask for their money back because those images instantly brought back terrible memories. He always gave them a refund.

Lawrence Fishbourne was only 15. Dennis Hopper was high as a kite. Marlan Brando was in shadows because he gained so much weight before shooting they had to hide it somehow. What a trip

One of the really interesting connections in this movie is that Kurtz has a copy of The Golden Bough by Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer. Frazer wrote that the myths of a number of different mythologies throughout the world share a similar what we might call DNA. He claimed that the myths of disparate cultures all have at their heart the same story. He was fascinated by the Adonis myth of the dying and rising god and the myth of the Fisher King about a wounded king unable to reproduce who is so connected to the land that the land stops producing life. It is important to note that the Fisher King is also the keeper of the Holy Grail (insert Harrison Ford reference here). That’s what Kurtz’s other book, From Ritual to Romance, is about, the history of the myth of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail. Joseph Campbell was heavily influenced by Frazer’s work, and he continued it and condensed the story that Fraser believed was the foundation of all mythologies into a singular narrative, The Hero’s Journey, about a hero who receives a call to adventure, leaves the ordinary world, crosses a threshold into a special world, faces trials, endures an ordeal, defeats some foe, receives an elixir, and returns having been changed by his experiences. Willard’s journey is a retelling of that same story, as is Marlowe’s journey in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, reinforcing Frazer and Campbell’s belief that all stories are basically the same story. It also must be added that Francis Ford Coppola was friends with Steven Spielberg and a young man named George Lucas, who went on to do the Indiana Jones movies with Harrison Ford (there’s your second Harrison Ford reference), and each of those movies was about a hero on a journey. Lucas was such a great admirer of Joseph Campbell that A New Hope is a point by point retelling of The Hero’s Journey (and that’s three Harrison Ford references), and Campbell himself was a fan of Star Wars. Another writer who was influenced by Frazer was T.S. Eliot. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land was heavily influenced by Frazer’s The Golden Bough. When the poem was first published, it came with an extensive notes section, where Eliot explained what all his references referred to. The first note is basically, “Go read The Golden Bough and From Ritual to Romance.” Kurtz quotes part of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Hollow Men to Willard, which is interesting because the poem begins with a quote from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, “Mistah Kurtz, he dead.” So there’s a direct path of influence from the myths to Frazer, Frazer to Campbell, Campbell to Coppola, Spielberg, and Lucas, and Frazer to Conrad, and Conrad to Eliot and Coppola. This movie is so meta it hurts.

Bleak. Stark. Harsh. And yet moving and somewhat beautiful. It's not a true depiction of "the war" but it is art in cinema. A classic.

Martin Sheen suffered a near-fatal heart attack during filming; set production back by a bit. Nobody was supposed to be in Cambodia but everybody was. There was war throughout the Southeast Asian peninsula that whole time; not only as part of or collateral damage from the Viet Nam War, but civil wars and civil oppression and all that comes with all that. This is the 3rd most intense Viet Nam movie I've ever seen, ain't nobody gonna fault you for being scared of it and putting it off as long as you could. Be twice as scared of The Deer Hunter.

"The Almighty" calling out to Willard as he harnessed his heart of darkness to sacrifice Kurtz and end the horrors that he had created. Then calling him back once again, back to the humanity once more, back into the light. To the humanity he could not find at the start of the film where he craved that purity of war, the singular purpose of fulfilling the objective and casting off all societies burden. Men had sent him into the darkness to run his errand, he found the heart of the darkness, and when he chose to leave it behind the Almighty called out and welcomed him back into the light. Such a masterpiece of symbolism. The Futile and chaotic feeling imparted with this film is its critique on the Vietnam conflict and the horrors of War itself. We have characters who loose themselves in the dissolving moral fabric of war. We have characters who sit dining at the table while calling the shots, not caring about the reality. We have characters who get the thrill of killing, enjoyment in the extreme sport of it all. We have those who are just lost completely adrift in the chaos with no one in charge at all. We have corporations selling the depravity of it all for entertainment, but then falling into depravity itself. We have colonists who just see it as one more day on their frontier, one more regime, just the way it is as you bend the colonized to over centuries. In the end its all futile, if we win those people loose. If we loose, those people loose. The humanity is all gone, there is no way to win.

When my dad took my mom out on their first date he took her to see Apocalypse Now, which was an insane decision

I love how people told you this movie is based on Heart of Darkness. While thats true of the plot, in fact, this movie owes more to the book, Dispatches by Micheal Herr. Widely regarded as THE best book on the experience of the vietnam war. Herr wrote Dispatches in a haze of mental collapse reinforced with drugs, so although Dispatches is a memoir he always called it a novel. Herr co-wrote the screenplay for apocalypse now, and all the great parts- including Willard’s monologues - were written by Herr. On top of that, most of the best scenes come from Dispatches. My favourite is the guy with the bloop gun, which i think you only meet in Redux Also the Redux version is the version that Coppolla wanted audiences to see: the filming of apocalypse now was famously a disaster, the production was in the Phillipines and hit by a hurricane. Coppolla’s wife made a ‘filming of apocalypse now’ documentary - which Tropic thunder famously satirises, although few people realise it. But the result was coppolla could only afford to release the movie he wanted people to see when he finally put Redux together. I think you have met Dispatches before. Stanley kubrick used it to make the movie Full Metal Jacket. Except Dispatches is a series of separate reports and not a full story so kubrick stitched the reports in Dispatches together in a way that didnt work. But, worse, all the best bits of Dispatches were already In Apocalypse Now, and those couldnt go into Full Metal Jacket. Which is why Apocalypse Now will always be the superior movie about the Vietnam war. When i was a young soldier, all of the senior guys around us were vietnam vets. Apocalypse Now was kind of a bible and most of us could recite long passages from the movie (something that, much to my delight, is accurately portrayed in the book and movie Jarhead, which is a memoir of Desert Shield/ Desert Storm). It saddens me that two of the most iconic movies about the vietnam war experience are based on the late michael herr’s book, Dispatches, and almost no-one now is aware of that. Ps many people comment about how young Laurance Fishburne - Mr Clean - was when this movie was made. That was actually a deliberate decision. One of the - many - famous lines in Dispatches goes ‘How do you feel when a 19 year old kid tells you that he’s gotten too old for this kind of sh.t?… they’d be looking back at you over a distance you knew you would never be able to cross’.

"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. No safety or surprise, the end. I'll never look into your eyes, again."

It was a different time when this movie came out. The war was still recent and raw in our memory. We went there, killed millions of vietnamese and cambodians, we lost 58,000 Americans but another million or two survivors were damaged by the war, the aims were not clear, we lost the battle and never really had any closure. We went on like it didn't happen. You're right this is based on Heart of Darkness, a story about the Belgian reign in the Congo started by King Leopold who ended up murdering an est 10 million Congolese and maiming millions more since cutting off hands and savage whippings were the punishment for individuals not meeting daily rubber quotas so they can make tires for cars. Another genocide that is never really taught, glossed over, until recently. This movie captures that same crazy bloodlust but sets it in Vietnam.

One of the best movies ever made

I sat in line to see the premiere of this movie. I’ve never been the same since.

I asked my friend who was in Vietnam what the most realistic movie a out Nam. He said the only one to capture the true madness was this one.

My uncle, a Vietnam Veteran, said of all of the movies about the war Apocalypse Now was the most accurate. No one knew who was in charge and it was pure chaos. Bus loads of dogs would be brought in for their meat and a can of peaches would buy a woman for a day.